As I had written earlier, Facebook likes are frivolous, and are marked in fun, with no seriousness, there are exceptions.

But to the State department this does not matter.

Story:

State Department officials spent $630,000 to get more Facebook “likes,” prompting employees to complain to a government watchdog that the bureau was “buying fans” in social media, the agency’s inspector general says.

“Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as ‘buying fans’ who may have once clicked on an ad or ‘liked’ a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further,” the inspector general reported.

The spending increased the bureau’s English-language Facebook page likes from 100,000 to more than 2 million and to 450,000 on Facebook’s foreign-language pages.

Despite the surge in likes, the IG said the effort failed to reach the bureau’s target audience, which is largely older and more influential than the people liking its pages. Only about 2 percent of fans actually engage with the pages by liking, sharing or commenting.

In September 2012 Facebook also changed its approach to users’ news feeds, and the expensive “fan” campaigns became much less valuable. The bureau now must constantly pay for sponsored ads to keep its content visible even to people who have already liked its pages.

Another problem with the bureau’s social media outreach is a lack of strategy for reaching the right audience, the report said.

The Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) is the State Department’s foreign-facing public diplomacy communications bureau. It provides and supports the places, content, and infrastructure needed for sustained conversations with foreign audiences to build America’s reputation abroad. IIP is led by Acting Coordinator Maureen Cormack.

IIP supports both physical and virtual places, including approximately 820 American Spaces around the world, as well as a growing social media community that numbers over 22 million followers. Content includes publications, video, and U.S. expert speakers, who engage foreign audiences both in person and through virtual programs. IIP manages the infrastructure for all embassy and consulate websites, translations of public remarks by the President and Secretary, and internal websites serving field public diplomacy officers.

When you share information with a person, you are physically aware of his presence and ou are reticent about sharing your information.

This becomes difficult when the person whom you are sharing with happens to be your parents , relatives and even friends.

You are not sure how the divulging of the information will affect you.

Now this block exists even among friends!

Now I find that there few lasting friendships, but only ‘hi how are you”(there are exceptions).

So you have to share, but safely.

In a Social media, you do not physically see the person, you feel secure(in fact you are not, this is more dangerous as you do not know the person)

I checked with adults who engage themselves in chatting with unknown people of the opposite Sex,same-sex.

They are aware that the information will be misused.

The reason they informed me is that they can exchange lewd comments and things which they can not express in the Society openly, put it bluntly they can indulge in Sexual perversions, expressions , not approved by the Society.

There is a detailed Study by PEW Research center, on the behavior of Teens, Social media and Technology.

Excerpts.

Teens Behavior, Social Media

Teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they have in the past, but they are also taking a variety of technical and non-technical steps to manage the privacy of that information. Despite taking these privacy-protective actions, teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-parties (such as businesses or advertisers) accessing their data; just 9% say they are “very” concerned.>>

Teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they did in the past. For the five different types of personal information that we measured in both 2006 and 2012, each is significantly more likely to be shared by teen social media users in our most recent survey.

Teen Twitter use has grown significantly: 24% of online teens use Twitter, up from 16% in 2011.

Focus group discussions with teens show that they have waning enthusiasm for Facebook, disliking the increasing adult presence, people sharing excessively, and stressful “drama,” but they keep using it because participation is an important part of overall teenage socializing.

60% of teen Facebook users keep their profiles private, and most report high levels of confidence in their ability to manage their settings.

Teens take other steps to shape their reputation, manage their networks, and mask information they don’t want others to know; 74% of teen social media users have deleted people from their network or friends list.

Teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-party access to their data; just 9% say they are “very” concerned.

In broad measures of online experience, teens are considerably more likely to report positive experiences than negative ones. For instance, 52% of online teens say they have had an experience online that made them feel good about themselves.

Confirmation comes in the Technocrati 2013 digital influence report. It show that blogs were one of the most trusted forms of online media, with 31% of respondents being influenced to purchase via blogs, the third highest after retail sites (56%) and brand sites (34%). I may be biased, but I’d suggest this rather shows the value of marketers and the brands they represent engaging with relevant high profile bloggers in their field.

As you can see from the graphics below, Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram, for all the hype around them, rank among the lowest influencers of purchases.

“Budget-wise, brands are spending only 10% on social, more than half of which goes to Facebook (57%). YouTube and Twitter each get 13% of the brand digital budget, while about 6% is spent on influencers and 5% advertising on blogs.”

While it’s understandable that a bulk of money goes on Facebook, which is still influential, quite clearly some more of that digital marketing budget needs to start swing the way of bloggers and influences – only 11% does so far, despite the clear trust that consumers have for blogs. Brands are spending money to drive likes, and consumers are sharing content, but they are turning to blogs they trust to guide making purchases.

Customers like to ‘follow’ and ‘like’ brands to keep up to date with them, they very rarely use them to make purchases:

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Results from Kaplan Test Prep’s 2012 survey of college admissions officers* show that schools are increasingly discovering information on Facebook and Google that negatively impact applicants’ acceptance chances. While the percentage of admissions officers who took to Google (27%) and checked Facebook (26%) as part of the applicant review process increased slightly (20% for Google and 26% for Facebook in 2011) from last year, the percentage that said they discovered something that negatively impacted an applicant’s chances of getting into the school nearly tripled – from 12% last year to 35% this year. Offenses cited included essay plagiarism, vulgarities in blogs, alcohol consumption in photos, things that made them “wonder,” and “illegal activities.” In 2008, when Kaplan began tracking this trend, only one in 10 admissions officers reported checking applicants’ social networking pages.

“Social media used to basically mean Facebook. But the underlying trend we see is the increase in use of Google, which taps into a social media landscape that’s proliferated to include Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, blogging and other platforms — and teens today are using all of these channels,” said Jeff Olson, Vice President of Data Science, Kaplan Test Prep. “Additionally, we’re seeing a growing cultural ubiquity in social media use, plus a generation that’s grown up with a very fluid sense of privacy norms. In the face of all these trends, the rise in discovery of digital dirty laundry is inevitable.”

Olson noted, “With regard to college admissions, the traditional application — the essays, the letters of recommendation — represent the polished version of an applicant, while often what’s found online is a rawer version of that applicant. Schools are philosophically divided on whether an applicant’s digital trail is fair game, and the majority of admissions officers do not look beyond the submitted application, but our advice to students is to think first, Tweet later.”

Almost every student has heard a horror story. At the start of the school year, a BASIS college counselor told her class of a student whose acceptance to an elite college was revoked when he was caught badmouthing the school on Facebook. At Williams College, a student’s admission was rescinded because he posted disparaging remarks on a college discussion board. At the University of Georgia, when an admissions officer discovered an applicant’s racially charged Twitter account, he took a screenshot and added the tweets to the student’s application file. Though these are extreme examples, it’s difficult to pinpoint when a teenager’s social media habits shift from innocuous to alarming in the eyes of admissions officers. Anna Redmond, a 30-year-old former interviewer for Harvard University who blogs about college admissions, says she began regularly googling prospective students years ago (interviews with alumni are a minor component of Harvard’s admissions criteria). “You could sometimes find old blog posts where they were complaining,” she says. “Maybe there was a photo of a kid drinking a beer. I don’t think it’s personally that damning, but somebody else might.”